


Heart of untold regret.

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Baking, F/M, Love Confession, also some repression on dirk's part idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 15:38:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/750171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane spends an afternoon baking and considering confessing to the object of her affections.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart of untold regret.

**Author's Note:**

> just felt like writing some imperfect first love shit. enjoy. <3
> 
> the song jane sings at one point and that the title is based on is [fall in love](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhQq-4TA_7A) by lena park. it's lovely, you should listen to it.

You’re two seconds away from setting your house on fire and fleeing to Canada. You’ve tried resetting the modem, restarting your computer, and—in a fit of desperation—sacrificing a cake to the dark forces, but all connection to the internet has tragically vanished.

Your name is Jane Crocker and you have absolutely nothing to do.

You were in the middle of an intense conversation with one Dirk Strider when your connection cut out. Your entire existence is frustrated desperation. He’s a tall hunk of blondie who was proposing that the two of you go on an expedition to the woods near your house this evening and damn it, you want to!

You’ve been neighbors for going on ten years now and ‘Little Janey’ isn’t going to be the girl next door forever, no siree. You’re going to be Mrs. Strider someday and no force under God can stop you.

Unfortunately, your Adonis is halfway across town doing goodness knows what, so you can’t wander over and tell him yes in person. This will go on your list of endless hindrances for the day, you vow.

You let loose a sigh and run a single hand through your black bird’s nest of hair, your fingers getting caught painfully in the short mass of tangled waves and eliciting a yelp. “I really ought to brush it,” you mutter to your empty bedroom.

You honestly have no clue where your brush has relocated itself to, but there’s no pressing need to find it, so you let your attention wander. A quick listen to the local station via the radio on your nightstand tells you that the network will be down for an hour at least, so you grudgingly force yourself out of your bedroom and down the stairs.

Your father isn’t home. Malcolm Crocker works from eight in the morning to six in the evening and it’s only noon. You’re moderately relieved that he’s not home. You don’t want him to see how antsy you are without access to Pesterchum and your favorite websites; he’d just use that as an excuse to pry you away from the internet on a regular basis.

The thought of being unable to chat online with Dirk or your friends Jake and Roxy makes your stomach turn just a bit.

Still, even with his tendency to want to force you to spend your life being productive—blech!—you love your father. You miss the times when you used to have cake wars, both of you trying to bake the best one. They always ended in sticky frosting fights and long bouts of two-pitched giggling.

You have time. You figure making a cake for your dad to come home to is an adequately nostalgic gesture, and one which you’ll act on immediately.

Rummaging through the cupboards and refrigerator yields a cake pan in the shape of a sun with curving rays, a KitchenAid mixer, and ingredients of a quantity one doesn’t shake a stick at.

You pull from your harvest a small number of eggs and lay them aside, letting them come down to room temperature in your spacious kitchen. You hoist the dry ingredients from the countertop and place perfectly measured quantities of flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a small, plastic mixing bowl. There’s a plan in place for these, but you set them to the side as well and continue on to a soft stick of butter that sits nearest the stove.

You take a moment to preheat the oven, checking inside it for any stray pans or hot pads before shutting it and letting the heating elements ready it for one fabulously constructed Crocker cake.

Into the KitchenAid you place it, beating it for a moment before adding sugar and vanilla and continuing the process. The final product smells sweet and looks creamy in the metal basin.

You feel a surge of affectionate pride for the brownish yellow blend before you. You truly love baking. Your dad deserves a hug for the time he spent making sure you knew how to accomplish the hobby. The endless hours and the countless ingredients you’ve burnt or wasted flash in your mind, and you decide you’ll make him a big red velvet cake in the shape of a fedora next time.

Shaking yourself out of your thoughts, you begin to crack the eggs into a measuring cup. Six of them go in, and six unneeded yolks come out in the tender embrace of a metal spoon before being washed down the sink. You beat the egg whites into the vanilla butter mixture slowly, watching it swirl until combined, before adding the dry contents of your smaller bowl and two cups of buttermilk.

Once you’ve gotten then components of the unbaked cake merged into one lovely, gooey mess, you feed it into the cake pan and watch it spread into the corners of the sun’s rays. This is a fairly new pan, one that neither you nor your father have used, and you feel a flush creep into your cheeks at your immediate thought that you are proceeding to take its baking virginity.

You feel as though Strider would probably level you with a flat expression and a raised eyebrow that says “Really?” if he knew what you were thinking, and it makes you giggle nervously to think it.

 _Focus, Janey,_ you tell yourself.

You slide the pan into the now hot oven, the heat swallowing it up as you let the door swing shut. You’re forty minutes into the baking process with the time you spent letting the eggs achieve room temperature and spacing out, a nervous anxiousness creeping up your spine as you turn your attention to the frosting. You leave out the vanilla and the sugar, and pull from the fridge a container of cream cheese as well. The rest of your supplies are swept off the counter and into the sink in a jiffy, your hands flying to work on rinsing them and throwing them into the dishwasher. You wipe down the base of the mixer and the surface of the counter before determining that the kitchen is clean enough for you to divert your energy to the completion of your frosting.

You mix the cream cheese with measured amounts of your other materials with a hand mixer. When you taste it, you note the lack of pop. You won’t present your father with something like this. You throw in some lemon juice and cinnamon for flavor, and the result leaves you feeling chipper.

White cake rising in the oven and newly finished frosting sitting idly in the fridge, you abscond to your room to check your connection status. There’s no progress and you groan in frustration. You aren’t given to histrionics—or at least you’d like to say you aren’t, no matter what that Lalonde believes—but a day without internet is a day for which it’s not worth waking up.

The cake still has fifteen minutes before you need to check it, so you step out onto the balcony that extends out from your bedroom window and look down. It has a lovely view of the Strider yard, complete with a beautiful miniature of a forest that Dirk insisted be planted some years back. Mr. Strider—“Call him David, it pisses him off.”—was more than willing to indulge him, believing correctly both that Dirk would appreciate it and that it would keep him occupied while Mr. Strider worked, back when all his work was done from home. Now that his movies have taken off, he’s hardly ever around, so Dirk spends most of his time alone in the massive (gaudy, hideous, fire engine red) house or out hiking and surveying the landscape.

He has a fondness for nature you haven’t seen in anyone else. You think he’d do well as a geographer or photo journalist. You wonder if he has ever loved any person as much as he loves going on long walks through the woods. You wonder if he could love you like he loves studying bark from a millimeter away from the trees.

Your eyes close and you stuff down the pain that wells in your chest. _Today,_ you swear, _I’ll tell him how I feel._

It’s a cloudy day and there’s a breeze. The Strider front yard has the look of an abandoned copse just waiting to be invaded and used as a place for napping or sketching or dancing. The leaves of the stretching cottonwood trees dance lightly in the wind that blows intermittently. It’s springtime and you can smell the blossoming plants of the neighborhood. It’s a sweet, peaceful scent, one that you could easily lose yourself in.

You wonder if you’ve ever been quite this contented in your life.

Before long, it’s time to return to the kitchen, so you do with only a little regret for the beautiful scenery you leave behind you.

The cake is done at the time you anticipated, so it’s a simple task of extracting it from the oven and depositing it face first on a cooling rack, flipping it easily out of the pan. You’re silently grateful a ray didn’t break off in the transfer.

You wait ten minutes, busying yourself with a spot cleaning of the room.

Once the cake has cooled, you bring out the frosting you stowed in the refrigerator. On a last-minute impulse, you pull some orange food coloring from the pantry and squirt it into the mixture, blending it in with a fork and smiling at it.

“Looks just like sunshine, ehehe!”

A tune finds its way to your lips as you finalize the project. Comfortable in the solitude of your house, you sing sweetly:

_Oh, hear my cry_

_Yellow moon up high_

_And take my soul into your lonely light_

_So that this love can fly a thousand miles_

_And alight on him tonight..._

Your heart squeezes at the thoughts of Dirk that accompany the song. You wonder briefly if he’d enjoy hearing you sing it to him, hearing that you think of him when you hear it, but you’d be far too nervous to get out a single note anyway. You almost want to cry, but you steel yourself.

Dirk’s not with anyone. Dirk could like you. You don’t want to despair too much before giving it a chance.

The final product that sits before you on an orange platter looks lovely. You feel a sudden urge to present this to Dirk. You think he’d appreciate it. It looks a bit like the tattoo he has on his thigh of a serpent with the face of a sun. The name he gave it eludes you for a moment before you recall it. Yaldabaoth.

You don’t have time to ponder anything else, the sound of the doorbell ringing cutting off your appreciation of your homemade Yaldiabetes.

You open it to reveal one highly mussed seventeen-year-old Strider. Your breath catches in your throat. His golden hair looks ravaged by the wind. He stands before you in a black wifebeater, a dusty green jacket, and black jeans that fail disappointingly to cling to his strong legs.

“Hey, Janey.” His eyes are obscured by those absurd pointy shades, but you can almost feel the amber color burning into your own blue ones. He doesn’t quite smile, but he looks happy enough to see you.

“Hello, Dirk. Good of you to come by.” You gesture him inside, demanding that your heart stop hammering away at your ribcage. If you could only get yourself to not react so harshly every time you see him, you’d be a happier little lady. “I apologize for disconnecting so suddenly earlier. There have been wi-fi issues in the area for a short while.”

You’re talking too fast. You berate yourself mentally for it and hope he hasn’t noticed anything off about you.

You notice how distant he looks and for a moment it’s enough to stop you thinking about your feelings. “Dirk? Are you all right?”

His head turns toward you in a show of concentrated self-control, but you’re fairly certain you startled him. “Yeah. I’m fine.” You don’t buy it. “You didn’t get a chance to give me an answer earlier, so I wanted to come over before it got too late. You up for coming along, Miss Crocker?” He bows low, inclining his head in a fashion you can only describe as princely and flashing a look at you over the rim of his sunglasses. He completes the motion with a wink and the barest hint of a smile.

You break. You’re a chuckling mess and it just makes that phantom grin widen. “I would love to, Mr. Strider.” You curtsey in response.

“Excellent.” He sweeps you into his arms and spins you around once before depositing you on the spot.

“So gallant, Strider!” You can’t stop the blush creeping into your cheeks, but you’re laughing enough to feasibly redden your face, so you forgive yourself.

“I’m nothing if not a gentleman.”

“Just so, hoo hoo!” You’re so floored by his beauty. You want to crawl under your bed and stay there. The softness around your hips and belly is a stark contrast to the lean muscle that is Dirk Strider, but you know that he’s not shallow. He’s told you for years that you’re a beauty. You’re finally inclined to believe him, insofar as it helps you feel confident enough to pursue him.

You’ve worked hard to start loving yourself. You finally feel equipped to love him properly. All six feet of him.

“Oh! Wait, I have a cake in the kitchen. Would you like some?” You walk evenly to the room in question, ears straining to pick up the feather light footsteps behind you that tell you Dirk is following.

When he lays eyes on the garish orange baked good, a very obvious smile finally breaks out on his face. “Is this for me?”

“Yep!” you lie. It is _now_ , anyway. It wasn’t at first, but you don’t care and he doesn’t have to know.

“Thanks, Janey. You’re the best.” He plants a kiss on your forehead as you hand him a plate with one of the rays on it. You turn away, your eyes wide and your cheeks painfully hot.

“No problem, Mr. Strider.” You laugh nervously. If he notices, he doesn’t say anything. “Uhh, hey, Dirk?”

“Mm?”

You swallow and muster all your courage before turning to face him. A piece of cake disappears into his mouth and you wonder how to breathe.

“I was...” Inhale. Exhale. “I was thinking. We’ve known each other for such a long time.”

Did his chewing slow down?

“And I...” You swallow and shoot him your brightest smile. “I care very deeply about you, Dirk. I wonder if you feel the same about me.” You’re certain you’ll be able to see straight once the palpitations stop.

He’s very definitely not chewing anymore, his fork suspended halfway between his mouth and the plate, the bit of cake that had once been on it likely resting behind his teeth, unchewed.

He swallows finally and clears his throat. “You’re asking me if I have romantic feelings for you.”

His tone is flat. You can’t tell what he’s thinking and it’s driving you nuts. “Y-yes.”

Dirk reaches up and for a moment you wonder if he’s going to slam his palm into his forehead, but he wraps his fingers around the rim of his shades and pulls them off, setting them and his plate down on the counter and turning back to you.

He looks blank and oddly vulnerable. You’re terrified, but you get the strangest sense that maybe he’s more afraid.

It seems like an eternity before he speaks. Your smile hasn’t faltered. “Janey, you’re my best friend and I love you. I really want to be able to give you what you want. But I—” He hesitates.

The little bit of pain in his expression is too much for you. Concerned, you blurt, “Oh, Dirk, you don’t have to give me anything! I just want you, the way you are, nothing more!”

He smiles, and it’s the most miserable thing you think you’ve ever seen. “Okay.”

You’re gobsmacked. “Okay?”

He blinks and there’s that hard mask again, that impenetrable barrier. The Great Wall of Strider.

Dirk’s default expression is ‘I know more than you’, but he’s wearing ‘I know more than you and that amuses me endlessly’ at the moment. Your supersleuthing skills have revealed to you that it’s a defense mechanism. “Okay. If you’ll have me, Janey, it would be a privilege to make you happy.”

Your heart squeezes in your chest and you’re smiling like an idiot. You fling yourself at him, winding your arms around his neck as his slip around your waist. You look up at him and you’re grinning. He has just a bit of a smile on his face, but he’s looking right into your eyes and it’s intoxicating.

You lean forward hesitantly and he picks up on the motion, inclining his head so his lips meet yours. It’s your first kiss. Fireworks erupt up and down your spine and in the pit of your stomach. He pulls away at the same time you do, and you blush fiercely. You dance out of his grip and as you run out of the kitchen, you call back, “You should finish your cake so we can go hiking, Dirk!”

You’re filled with thoughts of smooching under trees, cloud-obscured sunlight providing just the right amount of illumination. You don’t care that your modem blinks excitedly about the regained internet connection, though you do make plans to change your relationship status on various sites as you gather your gear.

And if a few quiet tears make their way down Dirk’s face, you aren’t there to see them.

**Author's Note:**

> i felt like writing dirk being jane's first love and them growing up together, so dirk doesn't want to disappoint her. the plot confession i'll make is that dirk was gonna tell her he's gay but then she told him she wants to be with him and he's just like, 'gdi. well, if it makes her happy, bluh....'
> 
> jane likes him too much to look into his hesitation when he says yes.  
> dirk cares about her too much to be himself, because he doesn't want to hurt her.  
> they're dumb adolescents, forgive them their sins.
> 
> you can find me at reduxcorrelator.tumblr.com. if you have any concerns, critiques, questions, or requests, please feel free to leave a comment on the work or send me a message at my blog. feedback is very much appreciated.


End file.
